Change At The Salton Sea Is Affecting Bird Populations

Above: Waterfowl rest in the placid waters of the Salton Sea on Feb. 25, 2019.

California’s largest lake has long attracted visitors. Many go there year-round to see thousands of birds congregating around the lake and its nearby habitats, but the lake is changing and that’s changing bird populations.

More than 400 different species have been recorded here and estimates put the daily bird population around the sea at more than 100,000.

That’s great for bird watchers like Ryan Llamas. The Audubon Society member’s binoculars are pressed tightly against his eyes as he scans the open water.

“Yeah, so you’d expect you are going to see a lot of water birds. It’s really cool because I can see right now a grebe. A western grebe,” Llamas said.

The black and white birds have long, slender necks, like a swan’s, but grebes are much smaller. The fish-eating birds are just one small sliver of a broad and complex web of birds in the region.

“The Salton Sea is huge. It is 35 miles long. So you’re not going to see all the same species distributed evenly throughout,” Llamas said.

There is bird activity both in the water and along the shore at the Salton Sea Recreation Area, on the northeast side of the lake.

The sea is a popular destination for birds navigating the Pacific flyway because it has coastal wetland that are difficult to find in California.

“About 95 percent of (coastal wetlands) have been destroyed you know in the name of development, farmland, especially in the Central Valley and so the Salton Sea as an inland wetland is one of the last refuges for shorebirds. You probably can see here today the black-necked stilt or the American avocet,” Llamas said.

A lone seagull is perched on section of lakebed that has breached the surface of the Salton Sea on Feb. 25, 2019

Birds congregate in other habitats around Southern California, but there is a richness around the lake that’s unmatched in the region.

Llamas does not tire of the bird life that the water attracts.

“There are some ruddy ducks,” Llamas said as he pointed across the water. “Those are the ones that suffered from the die-off. So it’s kinda cool to see them too.”

Flocks of birds die at the Salton Sea

That duck die-off happened on the southern edge of the lake in January.

Avian cholera decimated ruddy ducks, northern shovelers, black-necked stilts and gulls. The disease spread quickly because the birds were huddled together looking for fish around a freshwater inlet, the New River.

Photo credit: California Department of Fish and Wildlife

Man picking up dead birds that succumbed to avian cholera at the Salton Sea in January in this undated
photo.

The outbreak was swift and deadly. Thousands of bird carcasses ended up at the Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge where the bodies could be safely disposed.

“This is our largest incinerator, let me open this up a little bit,” said Chris Schoneman, a biologist who works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

A peek inside that incinerator, which is inside a building the size of a single car garage, reveals bones that weren’t completely consumed by fire.

Incinerators were built here because disease has a long history of killing birds in this region.

“This past January it was close to 7,000 birds out there. And to try to get out there and pick 7,000 birds up one at a time is a huge challenge,” Schoneman said.

Burning the carcasses gets the diseased bodies out of the ecosystem, hopefully limiting future outbreaks. However, the fact that there are two incinerators here also says something about the changing ecosystem at the Salton Sea.